College Hotel

A stylish boutique hotel and top-notch restaurant with a twist, perfectly placed for Amsterdam's best known art galleries

This slick boutique hotel was designed in the vein of Dylans and Blakes London. But there's a twist. The College Hotel was founded as a hands-on training environment for the best students from the Amsterdam Hotel Management School. The only difference between this place and the real McCoy is the fresh-faced eagerness of the staff, which can hardly be marked down as a fault.

The hotel's 40 rooms are set round a quad in a listed school building from 1895, but there's nothing institutional about the interior. Enter the school gates and you cross into the floaty world of pampered luxury. In the lobby and corridors, soft lighting glances off red brick arches to atmospheric effect, while the couch-strewn bar attracts a trendy, cocktail-supping crowd. In the rooms, expensive fabrics and a minimalist colour scheme keep up the air of indulgence. There are spa treatments and massages for every temperament, while the fine restaurant (set in the old school gym) serves exciting 'New Dutch' cuisine.

Highs

• This is a spacious hotel oozing style; the communal areas are decorated to stunning effect
• The hotel's bar is fast becoming one of the city's hot spots and the innovative restaurant is so popular that you will probably need a reservation for dinner
• It's situated in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood, just beyond the limits of the busy tourist zone, and yet just a 5-minute walk to Amsterdam's museum quarter and the city's most exclusive shopping street, PC Hooftstraat

Lows

• It's run by students with professional supervision, but this combination still hasn't conquered the problems of very slow service
• This is a pretty formal place with an exclusive air, so you may feel uncomfortable if under-dressed